by Neil Boyd
‘What a mess,’ I said. I was still angry but each time I learned something new, the reason for my anger and its object changed.
I put on my jacket and set out for the priests’ home. I was on the point of dropping my letter in the pillar box when I caught sight of a blackbird nesting in the hollow of a wayside tree. The female bird did not move. Her yellowy beak was lifted as was her black, forked tail. Seeing her there at the mercy of every passerby, silently pleading to be left alone, to be allowed to bring her young to birth, I thought better of it. I thrust the letter into my pocket and jumped on the bus.
Before I got off, my letter of resignation was in shreds.
‘So, laddy, you decided to stay with little Charlie, after all.’
‘Yes, Father Abe.’
‘I’m pleased. He tells me you’re the best Simon of Cyrene he ever had. But as a matter of interest, why?’
I looked down from my height on the white-haired, white-bearded old priest in his armchair. ‘Why?’ I sighed deeply. ‘I don’t understand him and he can’t make himself understood but –’
‘He loves you.’
I winced at the word. ‘I suppose so.’
‘He made you understand that, laddy?’ I nodded. ‘He’s not doing so bad, then.’
I shrugged to show Father Abe that he was right. I went on to tell him about Neil Martin. Afterwards, I wished I hadn’t. He looked so distressed.
‘Poor little emigrant,’ he whispered, ‘angel of the Lord. Here am I still holding on per omnia saecula saeculorum, so’s you’d think the Grave-digger had mislaid his spade. While a baby dies and is sent back to the Manufacturer almost as soon as born.’
‘It’s not fair, is it?’
‘Ah, but I’m thinking, the wee mite must have had the wind of God’s mercy at his back.’
We were silent for a few moments. Each of us was thinking back, I felt sure, to Neil’s christening: the baptismal garment new and for ever white, the light of his candle that would never go out.
Father Abe showed he remembered. ‘Did I not bless him, laddy, and say, “May he never sin”?’
‘You did, Father Abe. And they laughed at you.’
‘Will you tell his dear father and mother that I will say Mass for them tomorrow?’
I promised.
‘And now, laddy, I can let you into the truth about little Charlie. I couldn’t have told you, mind, if you hadn’t decided to stay.’
I was interested but apprehensive.
‘You won’t breathe a word to the wall about this because I’m betraying a confidence, y’see, and that’s a terrible sin. Well, it would be if I weren’t so old and past it.’
I smiled.
‘You see, laddy, that Headmaster who put an end to his life –’
‘Yes?’
‘Little Charlie saved him.’
So Father Abe was himself under the spell. ‘Saved him?’ I said. ‘How?’
‘Mr – what was his name? – Wilkins, wasn’t it? Mr Wilkins was on the edge of a breakdown.’ I tried to intervene. ‘Wait, now, laddy,’ Father Abe insisted. ‘Part of his illness was that he was, how shall I say? interfering with some of his pupils.’
‘Girls,’ I gasped.
‘Boys, laddy. There was proof in the form of letters written to two of them by the Head. The parents found these letters and gave them in strictest confidence to little Charlie.’
Father Abe had no need to continue. Fr Duddleswell, in suggesting to Mr Wilkins that he resign, was allowing him to leave his post with honour. The alternative was to be sacked, disgraced and even incriminated. Yet before the Coroner, Fr Duddleswell had apologized for acting too hastily and being too hard on the Head.
‘His wife knows, I suppose, Father Abe?’
He nodded. ‘But not the daughters. Little Charlie swore he’d not tell anyone in the parish.’
‘Not even me.’
‘Seems so. Mrs Wilkins will bless little Charlie till her dying day for salvaging her husband’s reputation, not to mention her own and her daughters’ happiness. It would have broken little Charlie’s heart to throw the Head before the courts, not after all his years of devoted service. And especially when he was really only a sick man.’
To keep my tears in check, I became sharply angry again but this time the anger was pure, emotionless, without any object. It was like screaming in a vacuum, eerie and soundless.
‘Why did he swear at me in Irish, then?’ I blurted out.
‘Acushla agus asthore machree?’
‘Yes.’
‘I taught him that. Don’t you know, it means, “You are the beat and beloved of my heart”.’
I scratched my head and rubbed my face all over with both hands as if I was washing it.
‘I thought he had gone to the V.G.,’ I said, ‘to get me moved to another parish.’
‘He did.’
‘So I was right.’
Father Abe smiled. ‘How wrong can you be?’
‘Tell me, please.’
‘The Vicar General summoned him. He wanted to persuade little Charlie to take on this new and bigger parish. Charlie, the vain blighter, had had his eyes on it for years. He’d be made a Canon in the bargain.’
‘And?’
‘He asked if he could take his curate with him, and when the V.G. said no –’
‘He refused.’
‘Never known such a thing before in all my life.’
I took in a deep breath of air.
‘You should realize, laddy, that little Charlie doesn’t blame you in all this. On the contrary, he says you are quite right on the evidence you have. He admires you immensely, y’see.’
I stood up and asked Father Abe for his blessing. He gave it and said:
‘Little Charlie is a good priest, laddy. He is nailed to his trade. As to yourself, trust in Christ.’ He drew his blanket tight across his shoulders. ‘Our trust, our dreams, too, are safe with Him.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Love and long life to me little Charlie.’
Our meeting was over. His white head dropped and he relapsed into an old man’s sleep, effortlessly.
I murmured goodbye and went homewards. Back in the parish, I wandered around aimlessly for a whole hour, ashamed, wondering what to say to Fr Duddleswell when we met.
In the hall, I was met by Mrs Pring. She still looked badly shaken.
‘He’s back, Mrs P?’
She nodded.
‘Is he completely better?’
Mrs Pring shook her head sadly. ‘Go to him, Father Neil.’
Fr Duddleswell was at his desk, his discarded glasses in front of him. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his sleeve as I entered.
‘I’m sorry,’ I began, troubled to see him so upset over me.
‘Father Abe, lad. He’s gone.’
‘But,’ I gasped, ‘I was with him less than a couple of hours ago.’
Through my head went a torrent of thoughts. What a foolish thing to say! Does it take an old man two hours to die? There were no cigar fumes in the air. Did the news about baby Neil finish him off? Did I watch him go and not realize it? He didn’t die like an Italian tenor, after all.
Fr Duddleswell looked up at me, not seeing anything. ‘I had a phone call, Father Neil.’
I repeated Father Abe’s last words: ‘Love and long life to me little Charlie.’
He shook his head gratefully and the tears flowed. For the first time I saw him without clouds or smokescreens of his own making. There he sat like any other man, hurt, vulnerable, undefended.
As I leaned over him and rocked him in my arms, he was mourning Father Abe.
‘Ahir, vick machree,’ he kept saying, ‘Ahir, vick machree.’
How could I have guessed then the paradoxical meaning of that refrain: ‘O father, son of my heart.’
Bishop O’Reilly came up trumps. In response to Don Martin’s request, seconded by Fr Duddleswell, he allowed baby Neil and Father Abe to be buried together. The Bishop adapted the liturgy himself to make
this possible.
No funeral was ever quite like it. Father Abe’s coffin with its black drapes, adorned with his biretta and sack of Erin’s soil, alongside the white coffin of a baby with its wreath of white roses.
Not one of the 120 priests or the congregation who crammed the church sensed anything incongruous in the ceremony. Not even the fact that Neil’s two brothers were wearing white blouses and his mother was proudly wearing a white hat.
So, it came to me, Father Abe is proving to be a legend right to the end. We’re burying an 86-year-old priest with the last child of the many hundreds he must have baptized in his long priestly career.
The Bishop himself presided, Fr Duddleswell celebrated Mass with me assisting him. Fr Duddleswell’s sermon, one of the shortest yet the most moving I ever heard him preach, ended with the words:
‘Hand in hand they go, unsullied ones, into the Kingdom of Light.’
THE END
GOOD FRIDAY 1979
About the Author
Neil Boyd is a pseudonym of Peter de Rosa. After attending Saint Ignatius’ College, de Rosa was ordained as a Catholic priest and went on to become dean of theology at Corpus Christi College in London. In 1970 de Rosa left the priesthood and began working in London as a staff producer for the BBC. In 1978 he became a full-time writer, publishing the acclaimed Bless Me, Father, which was subsequently turned into a television series. De Rosa went on to write several more successful novels in the Bless Me, Father series. He lives in Bournemouth, England.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Neil Boyd
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9872-7
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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